David Escobar is an aide to Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey. David is the leading voice inspiring Latinos and indigenous peoples to take part in the “green movement” and not just focus on making the “green money”. Throughout the interview, he exhibited deep knowledge on the topic because of his indigenous background.
Through Escobar’s knowledge, we uncovered the importance of the environment from both a formal governmental and an indigenous perspective. The government has long ignored the reality of several environmental issues, including climate change, which as explained by Escobar, is linked to economic welfare and will result in serious economic downturns. For example, sea level rises are one consequence of climate change because 23% of the population lives in coastal areas. Coastal flooding, eroding shorelines, saltwater contamination of fresh water supplies, and increase in the salinity of estuaries are examples of how sea level rise will wreak havoc on a huge population of people and countless habitats. These disasters alone will cause the US government to spend about $156 billion to adapt to just a one meter sea level rise. The governmental perspective is more focused on the outcomes of environmental disaster and how certain global changes will affect people, not so much nature. The importance of the environment, on the other end of the spectrum, is the indigenous perspective. “Our oral history, our spirituality, our philosophy, our way of looking at the world is completely connected to the environment”. In other words, clean and flowing water, fresh air, and healthy animals are everything to them.
According to Escobar, in order to live more sustainably, the concept of biomimicry has been adopted in developing nations. This is a new way to hold on to what the indigenous peoples have believed in for ages. For example: plants harness light energy from the sun through their leaves and they convert it to chemical energy to put it to use. We have seen this happen all throughout nature and have developed solar energy to capture the light energy and convert it to electricity. By mimicking the cycles that the earth has perfected for millions of years and scaling them to fit our society, we will be able to sustain the growing population of this planet. Escobar believes that we are just renaming the concepts that indigenous peoples have maintained throughout the history of the world. “I think it’s a good way for western ways of being to accept the indigenous… if you want to call it biomimicry to make it go down more easily that’s fine with me, as long as the environment is taken care of.” We must embark on a journey back in history to dig up the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples.
Ancient wisdom is one of three roots that make up the green movement: indiginous wisdom, new technology, and social justice. Each is significant, but the indigenous wisdom is the foundation, in Escobar’s eyes, of the whole green movement. The “indigenous” depicted in pop-culture is not necessarily what we are talking about here. The worldwide indigenous: the natives from South America, Athabask in Alaska, the Celts in Ireland, and the Sami of Norway and Sweden, etc. They are all saying the same thing. “We all wore feathers at one point so how do we all go back to our indigenous cosmology?” This question has been an epic spark to the whole environmental movement. From here, social justice and new technology comes into play. As a wealthier community, we must reach out and assist not only indigenous people find their environmental roots but all people. “Look at the folks over in Richmond... they’re dealing with some serious environmental issues.” We can’t just simply boast about how environmentally friendly our Birkenstocks and our Whole Foods are, we have to start building bridges to connect to other communities. From there, we can build a universal environmentally friendly society. Now that’s something to boast about!
With the proliferation of new technology, we have seen its importance on the environmental movement. Not only have we increased the efficiency of the machines that were developed long ago, but we have also made brand new technologies for the advancement of the green movement. Just take this blog for example: In order to write this blog post, I have used a cell phone, a computer, and a recording device. To get this valuable information out, I have to use technology. I’m not the only one doing so; a huge chunk of the environmental movement is taking place through technology. There is serious controversy on the whole topic of technology, however. Once we have exhausted the use of our computers and cell phones, they are sent in massive container ships to places in rural China. The most infamous “E-Waste” town is Guiyu. This in this electronic graveyard, workers strip the valuable parts of electronics such as the gold, silver, and copper in the chips and the circuit boards of computers. To liberate the metals from the bulk of the computers, workers crack open the electronics with their bare hands, melt the plastics with no protective gear or machines, and discard the dioxin ash and acid into the air and nearby river.
In conclusion, after speaking with Escobar, it is clear that by going back to indigenous values, we can provide deep roots to the environmental movement. It is embedded in their culture to respect this planet and I think we can learn a lot from listening to them. Biomimicry is just one example of how our modern society can try and go back to these ancient values. Keeping the other two principals in mind (new technology and social justice), we need to approach environmental issues as equitably as possible so we can include a multitude of different communities. However, we must be careful how much we depend on technology because once its life has come to an end, it is discarded quite hazardously. By looking back on indigenous perspectives, we can carry out the most effective collective environmental initiative. Julia Hansen, Earthscope Student Reporter
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